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Wednesday, 29 January 2014

GOVT WASTES US$100m MEANT FOR POOR

The Swaziland
Government has wasted more than US$100 million that was meant to help poor
people in rural areas, a new auditor-general’s report has revealed.

The money was
supposed to be used for projects to alleviate poverty under the Rural
Development Fund (RDF), which is administered by the Swazi Ministry for
Tinkhundla.

Instead, the
money was squandered on useless goods that were left idle and unused.

Media in
Swaziland reported that an Auditor-General’s report said as a result more than E1
billion (US$100 million) has been wasted since the RDF was set up in 1999.

Muziwandile
Dlamini from the office of the Auditor-General revealed that some
constituencies made orders for items that ended up not being utilised. Dlamini said
audits conducted in some constituencies had revealed the problem and now more
constituencies would be audited.

The Swazi
Observer newspaper reported Dlamini
saying in some cases, items were ordered and not delivered while in other times
the wrong items were delivered and then ended up not being utilised by the
constituencies.

Dlamini said
this was a clear indication that some constituencies initiated projects that
were not required, but they did so just for the sake of doing something.

Dlamini added failure
to coordinate and plan for their projects was often the cause for collapse of
the projects initiated by tinkhundla.

Tinkhundla is
the political system used in Swaziland that bans all political parties from
contesting elections and places power in the hands of King Mswati III, who
rules as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

Seven in ten of
the King’s 1.3 million subjects live in abject poverty, earning less than US$2
per day. The King is reported have a personal fortune estimated at US$200
million. He has 13 palaces, one for each of his wives, a private jet airplane
and fleets of Mercedes Benz and BMW cars.